Saturday, May 22, 2004

Lugar just isn't enough. We really need one of the real knuckledraggers to do something like this, not just one of the old guard types. But, I guess it's a start.

In response to September 11, 2001, the United States has created a new Department of Homeland Security, improved airport and seaport security, reconfigured our military weapons and tactics, and scrutinized the efficiency of our intelligence services. All of these steps may help to make us safer. But taking military action against terrorists and their supporters and improving homeland defense are not the same as executing a global strategy designed to overcome terrorism. Military action is necessary to defeat serious and immediate threats to our national security. But the war on terrorism will not be won through attrition - particularly since military action will often breed more terrorists and more resentment of the United States. Nor is the threat or use of military force likely to achieve national realignments that mitigate the extreme danger posed by terrorism in an age when weapons and materials of mass destruction are increasingly available.

Unless the United States commits itself to a sustained program of repairing and building alliances, expanding trade, pursuing resolutions to regional conflicts, supporting democracy and development worldwide, and controlling weapons of mass destruction, we are likely to experience acts of catastrophic terrorism that would undermine our economy, damage our society, and kill hundreds of thousands, if not millions of people.

The United States, as a nation, simply has not made this commitment. We are worried about terrorism, but the evolution of national security policy has not kept up with the threat. We have relied heavily on military options and unilateral approaches that weakened our alliances. We have engaged in self-flagellation over the September 11 tragedy rather than executing affirmative global strategies aimed at addressing the root causes of terrorism.

He even used that dreaded phrase "root causes" just to explode the brains of the freepi.